


[don't count the miles]

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: [to see you there] [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Betty Ross is a Scientist, Familial Discord, Female Friendship, Gen, Tony Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3872647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She ends up talking about it to Natasha Romanoff one evening, over very Italian coffee in the shell of what will eventually be Natasha's floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[don't count the miles]

Betty's first actual project, at the personal and mostly private request of SHIELD's Deputy Director Maria Hill, is to present data and evidence to get Emil Blonsky, now designated the Abomination, permanently off any possible list of World Security Council "assets". Given that her gut response to finding out they'd _ever_ wanted to do anything but keep him very securely in a hole far underground had been _are you fucking_ kidding me _are you fucking_ insane _?_ , Betty's more than happy to do it, too. 

Maria Hill strikes Betty as very young for the deputy directorship of something like SHIELD, but Betty also has to admit she's hit the point where half the people doing anything seem young to her. Otherwise Hill's incredibly self-possessed, efficient, and Betty ends up with the strong feeling that somewhere along the line, the military lost an amazing officer to SHIELD and probably deserved it. It also strikes her that her father would have to deal with this young woman, and with this young woman functionally if not technically outranking him, and it gives her a bitter sense of satisfaction. 

SHIELD gets her Blonksy's records and personnel files, as well as samples of whatever the _hell_ her father had been pumping into the man. To start with, they also offer lab-space, but clearly Tony Stark and SHIELD have a friendly rivalry that probably pushes the definition of "friendly" and he offers to design her a lab and office from the ground up, "seeing as the building's in construction anyway." 

Betty's more than up to seeing Tony's ulterior motives: he clearly doesn't want Bruce to leave, and he's decided getting Betty to stay and call at least New York - if not the actual Tower itself - home is one of the best ways to make sure he doesn't. (And Betty hopes he's right.) But she's also a little more comfortable dealing with Tony than she is dealing with SHIELD as an organization: she's liked every SHIELD _agent_ she's met so far, but she's more aware of what the _agency_ does than leaves her willing to trust it. Conversely, she knows how to handle Stark. 

It's actually Clint Barton who says, unprompted, "By the way? Take the Stark lab. You'll be saving SHIELD money and you headaches and dealing with Stark sulking. Everybody wins." And when she contacts Hill's aide to let him know, the man does sort of seem to be relieved as much as anything. And for his part, Tony's _delighted_. 

 

Watching Bruce and Tony reminds her of a friend of her father's, whose wife had an English bulldog and a bored Jack Russell terrier who probably would have destroyed a lot more if he didn't have to keep running back to convince the bulldog to come along. Right now, Tony's fascinated with engines, apparently because he'd been knocked around by the helicarrier engine while trying to fix it, but as far as Betty can tell he's having difficulty settling on a direction to go with it. If he didn't have Bruce to orbit around, Betty thinks, he might have gone so many different directions he'd've exploded by now. 

In between tethering Tony, Bruce is working on improving detection of power-sources like the Tesseract or Tesseract-derived tech, which Betty thinks is at least a little because he needs, or at least needed, an excuse to give himself for staying at the Tower, instead of disappearing back into the seas of humanity. She doesn't think he's honest with himself about how lonely he was - specifically _lonely_ , missing having friends, colleagues, students, _people_ \- and how much he didn't want to give that up. But that's okay. 

After a month or so, Betty revises her opinion of Tony: he's not one of the naturally charismatic arrogant patronizing assholes who so readily populate certain STEM fields and make everyone else miserable unless they're carefully managed. Rather, he's one of the socially maladept, lonely, sent-to-school-too-young, probably-neuroatypical disaster areas who - in this case - figured out that since he has more money than God life is _easier_ when he _acts_ like a naturally charismatic arrogant patronizing asshole and has been doing it for so long it's second nature and he's really, really good at it. 

Same outcome, different cause. Subtly different ways to handle it. 

She ends up talking about it to Natasha Romanoff one evening, over very Italian coffee in the shell of what will eventually be Natasha's floor. 

As Betty understands it, all of what Tony is really the foremost proponent of calling the "Avengers" are going to have their very own floors, the top five under the penthouse, because since Tony's (or possibly Pepper's) building got savaged anyway, he might as well make sure all his new friends get their very own bedrooms. And, possibly, massive exercise gyms, firing ranges and anything else they happen to want. She doesn't even want to know what Tony's encouraging Bruce to put on theirs. 

Natasha's been in and out every few days, and since she and Clint Barton are the two (well, other than the Asgardian) most likely to be unavailable for long periods, Tony seems to be taking full advantage of it to get as much of their involvement as possible. 

Betty's not sure how 'chance' their chance meeting in one of the Tower common areas really was, given she's absolutely sure Natasha's still very deliberately Making Friends, but when the light conversation got there she was happy enough to accept the invitation to come and look at the space. 

Betty can't imagine Clint _hasn't_ told Natasha that Betty knows what she's doing; the fact that the young woman's still doing it makes Betty suspect that the making friends isn't _only_ about being Bruce's control switch. Which she isn't; not really. Bruce is Bruce's control-switch and always has been, what he was able to do in the Chitauri attack is _already_ miles, light-years away from where he was in Harlem, let alone in the lab accident, and Betty's comfortably sure that the more they know, the further they can go. 

She might be the trigger for control, the one . . . well, important enough that one kind of instinct cuts through the screaming chaos of everything else that goes on in his brain and body in an episode and lets him focus a little, but being a talisman doesn't mean being in control. It's about what's in _Bruce's_ head, engraved in _his_ neurons, not some magical power of hers. 

But she suspects life as one of SHIELD's premier agents and assets is probably lonely: you've got colleagues you may or may not see, depending on assignments, or you've got civillians who you can't tell about your job anyway. Betty suspects that right now she occupies the rare kind of slot that's balanced between, and that actually, Natasha likes people. 

Likes them. Doesn't trust them easily. And that's why, catching the edge of something she realizes is _wariness_ as Natasha looks around the empty structure and notes the things Tony's asking her about what she wants, Betty waits until she's done and says, "He absolutely is trying to buy your friendship, you know." She glances up at the skeleton of a building that will eventually be something else and adds, "He has no idea how to make friends any other way." 

When she looks at Natasha, the younger woman's face is slightly amused and a little quizzical. "Most people don't admit that," she remarks. "About themselves or about people they like." Betty half-smiles and shrugs. 

"Tony Stark knows exactly how he behaves," she says. "Sometimes he does it on purpose, sometimes he doesn't, but he knows what it is he's doing. He doesn't see any single reason why anyone would actually like him, except for what he can do for them. And money and stuff are the two things in the world it doesn't hurt him to give people." 

A sudden thought makes her laugh. "Actually I'll bet Pepper being CEO has turned trying to buy her gifts into a nightmare, because now there's nothing he can get her she can't get herself." She shrugs again. "He doesn't know how to be nice, he doesn't know how to be genuine, he doesn't know how to act like he's taking things seriously - at least, he can't do any of those things without hurting himself. He can't keep from making mean jokes or pushing boundaries. 

"But," she says, gesturing to the ceiling, "he can make sure you have nice stuff. So that's what he does. Honestly, he needs about twenty years of therapy," she adds, tucking her hair behind her ear, "but that's never going to happen." 

Natasha sits down on one of the plastic wrapped pallets and Betty sits on the one beside her. "You're good at people," Natasha observes, matter-of-fact, putting her coffee mug down beside her. Betty wrinkles her nose and crosses one leg over the other. 

"My dad was worse at home than he is at work," she says, and she's relatively pleased at how freely she manages to say it: it was easier to make the decision to stop protecting him, at all, than it has been to act on it. "I learned to be good at him. Then I learned to be good at making sure professors and department heads liked me, and on, and on." She gestures with the hand that holds her coffee. "Besides. The only thing that's rare about Tony Stark in our field is the fortune and just _how_ good he is at what he does." 

At that, Natasha actually laughs, softly. "I'll admit," she says, mouth quirking, "once he _stopped_ trying to burn his life down around him, he got a lot harder to manage." And now it's Betty's turn to burst into laughter - slightly startled laughter at that, at the second admission buried in the comment. 

Then she says, "Oh god, I bet he was _awful_ ," as the image of someone like Tony Stark _really_ engaged in self-destruction flashes across her mind. At Natasha's brief expression of tortured patience, Betty laughs again. "So he _really_ doesn't think he has much to offer you besides stuff." 

Natasha smiles briefly and then tilts her head. Her hair's getting longer, Betty notes, wonders if she'll cut it again or just let it grow. "Little birdies tell me you're looking into Blonksy," she says and then looks amused at Betty's sour expression. 

"Not that I'm not happy to do the work," Betty says, "but the sheer intensity of how often I'll want to shout _what in god's name were any of you thinking?_ is going to be unpleasant. And Blonksy was malignant and violent _before_ they started pumping him full of fuck-knows-what, never mind the insanity of combining that with our research - " she makes a noise of disgust. "And I shouldn't be surprised someone thought he might actually be useful now but for fuck's sake - " 

"The head of Operations specifically asked Stark to go ask your father for access to Blonksy and cooperation," Natasha says, and Betty thinks she sees mischief behind the bland comment. "As part of his consultation work for SHIELD, and as a sign to the Council that SHIELD was taking this very seriously." 

For one brief moment Betty's imagination _tries_ to come up with a vision of Tony Stark and her father having a conversation even when the General _wasn't_ at the bottom of crushing failure, before it gives up and she says, "Oh god. What happened?" 

"Well," Natasha says, solemnly, "Stark approached the General at his favourite bar, eventually the General tried to have Stark thrown out, formally refused the Council any access to Blonksy whatsoever, and the last I heard the building had been demolished and Stark Industries sold the land to an urban food co-op." 

Betty stops laughing eventually. 

And then she wipes her eyes and says, "You have no idea how much I appreciate you telling me that." Natasha salutes her with a coffee mug. Then she leans back on her hands. 

"And then what, for you?" she asks. She sounds genuinely curious. Betty takes a deep breath and sighs, looking up around the space again. 

"No idea," she admits. "I had a life-plan once, but I haven't been more than moving from year to year since it blew up. I started teaching because I couldn't really stir up any enthusiasm for the projects I had opportunity to work on, and now . . . " she pushes her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "I still haven't wrapped my head around _now_ , never mind a few months from now. Keep the Abomination from wrecking havoc again, maybe figure out _why_ whatever got pumped into him reacted the way it did with our work, see what happens." She recrosses her legs the other way and takes a sip of coffee. "It's been a while since I've actually had much of the curiosity that used to drive me. Maybe I'll find it again, maybe I won't. Maybe," she says, trying to summon up some whimsy, "I'll take up tap-dancing. Or really bad handmade pottery."

Natasha smiles, and Betty asks, "What about you?" 

"Mm," Natasha says, sitting back up. "Work. Stark's building refit aside, I don't think the world needs _all_ of us in tandem all that often. But there's plenty of work for me to do." Then she says, as if it were a natural next comment, "You're a very forgiving person." 

And Betty knows what she means, and it's basically just confirmation that the meta-conversation she suspected they've been having this whole time really is there, so she doesn't ask what Natasha means. Instead she grimaces and glances at her mug for a moment. It's white porcelain, like most of the mugs on the habitable guest-level, with a ring of gold around the rim. 

"I think people can have more than one reason for doing something," she says, looking up again and shaking her bangs back out of her eyes. "I think most people do. It only really bothers me if I think one of those reasons is trying to get me to do something I wouldn't do if I were asked. You have a job," she goes on, pushing her glasses back up. "It's protecting people. I'm not going to hold that against you." 

Natasha smiles again. This time it actually seems pleased, instead of just friendly. 

 

Ringo's decided that he's not going to get eaten alive if he comes out from under the bed or in the closet by the time Betty throws herself into the couch in the suite that is - for now, anyway - basically home. As if talking about him was some kind of invocation, it turns out there's a call from her father on her phone; she deletes the notification and erases the message unheard. Ringo jumps up on the couch beside her and then demands to crawl up on her chest, so she settles herself half lying down and strokes his head. 

She didn't expect any part of that conversation to hit her like it is now, but maybe she should have: it's just getting clearer as time goes on that she spent a lot of the space between Harlem and arriving here wrapped up in a kind of psychological cotton wool, making things easy to deal with only because they were all on the other side of it, and now there are a bunch of places in her head that don't have any metaphorical calluses that need them. 

It had been fine when she'd been having the conversation, even. Now bits of it - or bits of what she'd been thinking a level down from where she'd been talking to a younger woman who was obliquely apologizing for doing what she'd probably been trained most of her life to do, which is think of people in terms of how they can help her achieve the goals she needs - come back and seem to leave bruises or scrapes in her head. 

Ringo sits on her chest and purrs and she tries to let a lot of that go, counting breathing and petting the cat instead. 

She doesn't mean to fall asleep; when she wakes up, Ringo's gone, she's rolled over onto her side and she's got the fuzzy blanket from the back of the couch draped over her. She's also - it takes her a moment to notice - not wearing her glasses anymore; instead they're tucked neatly beside her hand. 

Betty shakes the temples loose and slides the glasses back on, bringing the slightly fuzzy shape of Bruce sitting in the chair beside her into focus. She asks, "Did I sleep through supper?" 

He's got a tablet open, and for a second Betty thinks he's working, before she realizes he's actually scowling at Angry Birds, which he for some reason is determined to get three stars on every level for. "No," he says, looking at her and smiling. "Granted I was going to order Chinese, so technically it's impossible for you to sleep through supper, but you didn't sleep through when normal people eat supper either." 

"Mm, Chinese sounds good," Betty agrees, getting up and stretching her neck out. 

When she gets up to get a glass of water from the kitchen she stops just behind his chair, hands resting on the back; when Bruce looks up in her general direction, she bends to drop a kiss on his forehead, close to his temple. 

"Hi," she says. "I love you." 

Bruce reaches up and squeezes her hand, but says, "That's not fair." At Betty's quizzical look he adds, "I was waiting for some spontaneous moment to say that. I planned very carefully." 

Betty half-laughs and rests her forehead against the top of his. Smells his skin and hair. Bruce pulls her hand down to interlace their fingers and says, "I love you." And then, "And your cat threw up while you were asleep, but I cleaned it up."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] don't count the miles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4123551) by [echolalaphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echolalaphile/pseuds/echolalaphile)




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